The Whole Wide Beauty

'An immensely readable novel ... marks her as a debut novelist of the first order.' --Adam O'Riordan, Financial Times

'This is an admirable, intense first novel, serious and insightful ... I am excited to see what Woof will go on to write next.' --Adam Foulds, Guardian

'Demonstrates a well-tuned sensitivity to the complications of human existence.' --Mary Fitzgerald, Observer

Katherine Freeman has drifted far from her life as a dancer. Married with a small child and working as a part-time teacher, she has become distant from her life, navigating the world in a dream, drawn one way and another by those who depend on her. Her father David is the charismatic director of the Broughton Poetry Foundation in Northumberland. His intense passion for his work masks a complicated inner world, and his already fraught relationship with Katherine is further threatened when she falls in love with his young colleague, Stephen Jericho. Stephen and Katherine risk everything as they are explore the extremes of their passionate connection. In this powerful debut, Emily Woof uses her unique descriptive talent and spare prose to examine the human need to engage. This is an exceptional novel about life's choices: love and family, art and commerce, ideals and compromise.